Michael Clarke says yes, in principle.
“They have produced a great many drones, they are remarkably innovative.”
Ukraine are producing well over a million drones themselves, regardless of Western help.
“Ukrainians, I would say, are the leading users of drones in the world.”
Swarms of drones make the difference, he says, because it is very hard to do anything about 150 – 200 drones at once.
“We’re on the verge of a real revolution in drones as AI is able to develop swarms of drones,” says Clarke.
A swarm of 1,000 drones could talk to each other to find their own targets and how to attack them, he explains.
Ukraine has already done some of this work in how they attack ships, says Clarke.
“This is autonomous warfare. People get very worried about this because where is the ethical element, where is the human in the loop?
“The way it does work is that the commander would say: ‘For the next six hours, this zone of 3km by 3km is a free fire zone. Everything in that zone is hostile…. we will let the drones work out the best way to attack them’.
“This is already being done in air defence,” he adds, explaining computers prioritise targets, not human beings, who would be too slow.
“So we already live in the era of autonomous warfare and that’s about to become a much, much bigger area war.
“And it does raise ethical questions.”
The person involved in the decision-making process is “getting further and further away from the tactical decisions over what is targeted”.